This was the first time that the Red Army had penetrated as far as Lviv and they at once began to reorganize the country on the familiar pattern. The landowners were dispossessed and the initial steps were taken to collectivize the country. A large number of professors, journalists, clergy and other intellectual and popular leaders were removed. They were arrested by the NKVD and executed or deported to other portions of the Soviet Union. Many were killed by so-called outbreaks of the population led by Soviet agents. In fact all of the methods tested by twenty years of Soviet work in Ukraine were concentrated on the helpless province, in preparation for a “free” election. This election was held on October 22 and 91 percent of the population voted for the formation of a Popular Council of Western Ukraine. It was openly said that any one who refused to vote for the single list of candidates, which included almost no known Ukrainian leaders of Western Ukraine, would be treated as a counter-revolutionary and there was no need to amplify this statement. At its first meeting on October 27, the new Council formally begged to be included in the Ukrainian Soviet Republic. There were more meetings of the picked groups at Kiev and at Moscow and on November 1, representatives of the Council were invited to Moscow where they presented their petition and were duly accepted into the bosom of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic. From then on Western Ukraine was regarded as an inalienable part of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic. It was the same act that had been symbolically performed in 1919, when the delegates of the Republic of Western Ukraine had appeared at Kiev and the united Ukrainian Republic had been proclaimed. But what a difference! Then representatives had appeared; there was joint discussion of the problems that had to be solved; there were attempts to resolve them on democratic lines. Now the appeal was to the Council of Commissars and the Supreme Soviet at Moscow. The delegates were handpicked and there had been already a long list of arrests and executions before the conscious portion of the population adequately reflected the will of the Communist Party, which had won few adherents during the preceding twenty years. The farce continued with new demonstrations of love and affection for Stalin and the Soviet Union. On December 24, after more preparation, the proper candidates were elected to the local soviets and on March 24, 1940, Western Ukraine elected delegates to the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic and to the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. The next year and a half were spent in remodelling the country and in stopping any manifestations of the popular spirit which were not socialist in essence and only Ukrainian in language. Only the personal reputation of Archbishop Sheptitsky saved him from sharing the fate of the vast majority of the intellectuals and clergy of the country.